


Remembrance; Requiem

by ShadowSpires



Series: Remembrance [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gore, Grief, Horror, M/M, Post-Order 66, Unstable Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-27 22:30:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10818081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowSpires/pseuds/ShadowSpires
Summary: Rex has been dead for three days when the deep, twisting roots of Sith magic finally burn themselves out of Cody’s head. (Potential Ending #1)





	Remembrance; Requiem

**Author's Note:**

> Potential ending #1 for "Remembrance." Other two coming... eventually. 
> 
> SPOILERY POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING AT THE BOTTOM, KIDDIES! Check if you're worried.

Rex has been dead for three days when the deep, twisting roots of Sith magic finally burn themselves out of Cody’s head.

There are no insects in space, to have begun the process of returning his vode to the components that made him. But even in the chill air of the space ship, the pervading smell of rot had snuck into the ducts as Rex’s body started to break down. The bacteria in his gut, the small amounts in the air from the last planet they visited, it all worked towards what nature had intended of it.

Cody comes back to himself heaving, the too-familiar smell of a body rotting unattended jolts him from blank nothingness to full awareness in a blink, rocketing him from a dusty battlefield on Utapau to a small ship in the middle of nowhere with only a vague memory of Rex, in-between, leaning over him in a medbay. 

There is a moment that would be panic if he were an ounce less well trained as he deals with the mental jarring of place, the utter blank between his memories. He looks around the empty cockpit, bewildered, heaving himself to his feet quickly, swaying when dizziness overtakes him. 

It feels like he hasn’t moved for days, like he’s been subsisting without water or food. 

But he’d seen Rex. 

Rex was here, so everything must be okay. 

He steadied himself against the wall for a moment, before striking off to go take a look around. 

He has to find Rex, and maybe then he’ll be able to figure out what happened.  
  
~~

He finds him. 

He wishes he hadn’t.

~~ 

Cody was raised alongside death. It is no stranger, following at his heels like a feral dog – half tame and all the more dangerous for it. 

Sometimes it feels like he has spent more of his short life on battlefields than off them, wading through the blood and guts of his brothers, death howling it’s discordant siren’s song alongside him. 

Yet he falls to his knees at Rex’s side when he finds him, stomach heaving, splattering bile on the floor when his stomach will yield nothing else.

The worst of the bloat and rot of death has kept itself from his _riddur’s_ body, embraced as it is by the frigid air of the ship. He almost looks whole. The gaping wound in his neck taunts Cody’s folly, frozen floods of essential life wasted on the ground; crackled, desiccated blood a rusty halo.  

He reaches out anyway, and the cold of Rex’s body – always so full of life and fire – brands itself into heart, into memory and soul.

Rage tries to rise, tries to stoke the dimming fires of Cody’s own life, weak and fluttering and shocked into embers, tries to ask _who did this?!_

But he knows, somehow. 

Knows even without checking the security feeds, though he does that too, once he has lifted Rex’s dead weight and laid him in state on the bed. 

Watches himself kill his husband, listens to Rex plead with him to remember him, to remember himself. Watches Rex’s blood splatter across his own face. He can still taste it, rusty and sweet with decay on his lips. 

Watches, and does not even blink when the image stirs others. General Kenobi falling. Countless falling under the fire of his blaster in the name of the Empire. Rex’s skin parting under his blade. 

The chill space all around them is a forge fire against deep cold beneath his skin.

He presses one last button on the navicomp and returns to the cabin, standing over Rex. 

He had considered the knife himself. 

But he owed Rex a better end than drifting endlessly in the cold black of space. 

He didn’t know how long he stood there, before the ship started heating up, reacting to external forces the way Cody could no longer, even when the floor panels seared through his thin ship-boots, flesh sizzling. 

Not even a sun was a good enough pyre for Rex, but it was all Cody had to offer anymore. 

**Author's Note:**

> TW for Suicide


End file.
